Unintended Inheritance

Maintenance crews were trimming the trees downtown the other day, and while a few people in my office were grumbling about the noise, the sound of chainsaws hit me with a fierce, visceral wave of nostalgia: Dad clearing brush as my sister and I stomped around in muck boots on one of those bright early spring days where the sun is warm only if you keep moving, and the mud is too icy to play with long. 

I need a chainsaw, I emailed Jesse, and I need it right now. 

Maybe wait until we have 40 acres? he emailed back. 

I'm a city person through and through, and as much as the thought of homesteading appeals to my romantic side - chickens! llamas! acres of organically grown tomatoes! - I fully understand I'd starve to death without seven different kinds of takeout within walking distance. For as long as I can remember, I was desperate to escape my rural upbringing and move somewhere more exciting; now that I'm here, I love our house, love our neighborhood, love our city, and could never picture myself anywhere else. 

But then there's the sound of chainsaws in the spring. 

In January, we lost the patriarch of my dad's side of the family. Grandpa died suddenly, peacefully, only the day before his 92nd birthday. He was a marine biologist who worked at Bonneville Dam for most of his career, and with my grandmother somehow managed to guide four wildly unruly kids into being my amazing father and incredible aunts. He was a master builder in every sense of the word: furniture, buildings, family. 

The memorial for Grandpa was held last weekend, and it was a seminal family event: cousins and friends and old neighbors, and I laughed so hard my ribs hurt for days. It was the sort of huge, joyous event that only happens when my dad and his sisters get together, and if Grandpa had been there, he'd have been sitting in the middle of it all, chuckling to himself (and probably shaking his head). Several of us grandkids read letters written by our parents about their father, and Grandpa's legendary woodworking skills were highlighted in every single one. 

In his letter, my dad said Grandpa's shop was a magical place, where anything could be created or fixed. That's exactly how I felt about my dad's half of the garage. Need some pipe cleaners? There they are. Need a nail for something? There are giant boxes of them, in every size imaginable. Need some thickener for a mud pie? You could choose between thick shavings, thin shavings, wood chips and fine sawdust. Dad's shop was one of the constants of my childhood: it was there, it was Dad's, it had what you needed.

If someone had told my grumpy 15-year-old self I'd eventually be recreating Dad's shop, I'd have rolled my eyes. No, I was going to live in a glass and steel apartment, surrounded by cats and computers. I was going to escape the life of being press-ganged into painting trim and raking the lawn. 

Fast-forward thirteen years. I have a shop with lots of nails. I have tools that produce four different kinds of sawdust. I've fixed electrical and plumbing, and I'm blogging about some of it. At Grandpa's memorial, relatives who read this blog kept coming up and telling me how much like Grandpa I've become (which despite being a great honor is frankly mostly horrifying, because I don't think they understand exactly how bad I am at finishing projects, and I cringe at the thought of Grandpa or Dad walking around and critiquing my progress).

This transition was an accident. I didn't wake up one day and say, "Hey, you know what sounds great? Finding drywall crumbles in all the empty cereal bowls. Let's make that happen!" I was sent off to college with a really great basic tool set - you know, hammer, picture nails, tape measure, etc - that gradually got added to until I ended up with a miter saw on the kitchen table and a bottle of paint remover by my toothbrush. The only thing I can think of is that the act of renovation, of building, was absorbed into my DNA, where it lurked until it could no longer be contained. 

 Grandpa built things, and Dad hung around and watched him do it. 

Years later, Dad worked in his own shop and listened to the Seahawks on AM radio while little Kylie awkwardly hammered nails into scrap. 

If you ask me what I get from my family, I'm as likely to say "sense of humor" as anything else, but my real inheritance is this: the inclination to change our surroundings, the need to create, the desire to work with our hands. (The occasional pig-headedness that says FULL STEAM AHEAD when really, we should just put our tools away and call it a night.) 

So yeah, maybe I'm more like Dad and Grandpa than I thought. Now I just need to learn how to finish a project. 

(And maybe buy a chainsaw.)

Giving Thanks

One of my New Year's resolution for 2015 is to set up a regular blogging schedule and stick to it. Fortunately for me, it's still 2014, and I can therefore be forgiven for not posting often. 

I feel like I say this every time, but holy cowcats, we've been busy. 

When was the last time I posted? Almost a month ago. WELL THEN. 

So, first of all, our very beloved friends Faith and Janet got married - they've been together 27 years, it's definitely time they tied the knot - and it was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Their fantastic son Riley officiated, and it was an epic amount of perfect. Guh. 

THEN it was suddenly Thanksgiving, and we HOSTED, and aside from flooding the kitchen with two gallons of turkey brine* and then almost setting the table on fire** it turned out pretty much perfect. 

Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa arrived much earlier than I was expecting, and then Mom and Grandma took over the kitchen, so despite being the supposed host, I really didn't have to do much beside stand around and look good. (Well, sort of good. I'd carefully curled my hair earlier in the day and then promptly flattened my fancy 'do with my rain hood during a last-minute coffee run. EW.)

The turkey, despite having been abruptly de-brined* and then flash-cooked - wow, electric roasters take SO MUCH LESS TIME than ovens! - was delicious. Especially when carved up by Incredible Builder Dad.

Does that bird look done? Yes, yes it does. 

Jesse and I managed to get the house into some semblance of a reasonable living space, which included my last-minute projects: the window seat in the kitchen and reupholstering the extra dining room chairs. 

I only post pictures of chaos like this because Pinterest makes everything look pretty and easy. Nothing is pretty until it's done, and maybe it won't be pretty even then. (I mean, I'm still picking bits of upholstery foam off my sweaters and out of the cats' tails.)

Ta daaa! Window bench! (Still needs trim. Snd paint. And curtains. Martha Stewart, avert your gaze.)

I would like to point out that only one of these projects was hard. The chairs were so easy - just unscrew the seat, wrap the new fabric around and staple into place. In fact, I did all four chairs while also deep-frying an experimental batch of hush puppies for our office chili contest. All things considered, the hush puppies were the more difficult (if markedly more delicious). 

It was kind of strange to see our place all dressed up for the holiday. I randomly threw together a bunch of decorations I'd already had on hand, and I think it turned out really well.

 

And I made a chandelier-thing! Version 1.0 was held up with those temporary peel-and-stick command hooks, two of which fell down the next day and the additional four of which took the paint right off the ceiling. Version 2.0 is held up with actual, official hooks. We'll see if I can handle dusting it. (haha, like I dust...)

Aww, the living room almost looks finished. 

We even turned on our cheesy fake fireplace. 

And then we feasted!

This photo was taken immediately after the leaf incident** that very narrowly ended up with the table not on fire. 

Predictably, Sass spent the entire day hiding upstairs, but Pecan managed to charm pets and table scraps out of almost everyone.
  

It's been a very material-oriented year, necessarily so with the house purchase, because materials are required for remodeling, and remodeling itself is a very appearance-oriented activity. It's easy to get caught up in the swirl of decision-making, and with Pinterest available 24/7, it's even easier to feel inadequate about design choices I've made or the amount of money I make. 

Above everything else, I am incredibly grateful to have a roof over our heads, and to have enough space to host the ones I love. I am grateful to be building a home with the man I love, and I am constantly humbled by his love and support of me and my occasionally harebrained ideas. I'm grateful to be in a financial position that allows us to transform a blank slate into a beautiful home, and I'm grateful for the patience of my friends and family who have to hear my endless rambling about my latest obsession project. I am incredibly lucky, and I am grateful for all of it.

****


Once the family had dispersed, it was time to spend the rest of the long weekend trying to finish Dragon Age: Origins because Inquisition came out last week and aaaaalll my coworkers are playing it decorating for Christmas! Which naturally meant buying a ladder, since the only one we have is a rickety four-foot stepladder that I'm okay with but makes Jesse very nervous. So we braved the Black Saturday crowds at Home Depot to come back with a 24-ft extension ladder and what felt like an inadequate amount of lights.

Gung-ho to channel my inner Tim Allen, I rapidly discovered the reason that some people leave their roof lights up all year long: heights are freaking terrifying and the roofline is MUCH higher than it looks from the ground. 

Being the practical human being he is, Jesse drove us back to Home Depot for a stabilizer, which made things fractionally less terrifying. 

Jesse groomed our lawn, and I commenced decking the halls. As Dad pointed out, we're one golden retriever away from suburban bliss. (DON'T TEMPT ME, DAD.)

Also, it started snowing. 

And it was ridiculously cold and windy.

But the end result was worth it. 

Onward to Christmas!

* Let's not talk about this. Suffice to say that if one is brining in a bag, the bag should be sufficiently sealed before trying to stuff it into an already-crowded refrigerator. Words of wisdom, right there. 

**We're definitely not talking about this.